


The New West

by gigantic



Category: Reservoir Dogs
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:33:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigantic/pseuds/gigantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is there a ever a reason?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New West

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QDS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QDS/gifts).



> This story incorporates information revealed in deleted scenes and not just the theatrical release.

Hey, maybe -- maybe it was because you were Lawrence Jacobs for a while, and it was no big thing knocking over payroll offices for the thrill and respect found in it, twentyish and invincible.

Maybe you learned to pickpocket years earlier, digging around in the overcoats of strangers while your mom had her parties. Maybe nobody thought anything of it that you would sometimes rather sit in the room with everybody's belongings. It was quiet, away from the noise and brash adult laughter, away from everything you weren't interested in, and if anybody ever noticed something had gone missing, they never came after you for it. 

It wasn't like you kept their change and business cards anyway. Matchbooks and loose phones numbers -- no, maybe it was just an honest curiosity, poking through things that didn't belong to you, just to see, and you didn't start keeping the flimsy dollars and dirty coins until the time your mother came in and told you to quit being nosy.

So, fine, you sat on your hands for a while until you were in school one day, bored and distracted, and, hey, it would be so easy just to pluck the graham crackers Jessica Philips had poking out of her desk. She wouldn't even notice it, you bet yourself, and she didn't. She really didn't, searching through her books after the dismissal bell. You didn't even like graham crackers all that much, but you tucked them in your jacket and left. Maybe they tasted okay enough that night after dinner, when you crushed them as you flopped on your bed, recalling the set of Jessica's face as she looked for them, and the crunch was satisfying in your ears.

And it was like that for a while, just in-school bullshit and stuff to pass the minutes. You know, kid stuff. Looking back on it, those little bastards were way too small time, and it was a good thing you started smoking pot, otherwise you might have never had the displeasure of making friends with a half-retarded asshole like Beryl. You never would have smoked so much hash in his garage that you swore you could lift anything from anybody you two knew, he wouldn't have called you a fucking liar mcfuckwad, and you wouldn't have proved him the fucking gimp-brained idiot that he was.

(Maybe in '79 you heard Beryl got doubled-tapped during a cocaine bust, and you might have had the decency to feel lousy for him if you weren't so surprised he went actually working a job instead of choking on his own vomit after a bender. Poor fucking Beryl. The dumb bastard. At least it was an okay way to go.)

An hour near the movie theater and seven hundred dollars richer, maybe Beryl couldn't close his mouth from the fucking shock. He said, "Oh! Aw, Larry, you dishonest little shit," and introduced you to his cousin's friend's neighbor's great nephew or some shit a week later. Some guy named Benny Bruiser. Bruiser. Like a goddamn dog.

You didn't want to sell drugs, but maybe Beryl said it wasn't like that. They always needed guys, he explained, and you had been complaining about your crap job at the local grocery store. You had taken a few hundred dollars from the drawers over the past couple months, and it was just boring. Maybe you started hanging around, and Bruiser gave you bigger responsibilities as time passed. After a couple years he even gave you a gun and let you in on the bigger money jobs, until the cops made an antique store robbery. Maybe when Bruiser's go-to guy ended up dead on the six o'clock news, he gave you your big break, and then you ended up doing eighteen months for the payroll job gone wrong because you were no fucking rat, and you could own up to your own fuck-ups. The point, though, was you knew what it was like to screw up your first real chance.

Or, no. No, maybe when you got out, Milwaukee felt smaller than a holding cell. It wasn't freedom; it was just a rap sheet and a year pissed away. You tried to go straight for a little bit, but you were only ever average at being honest. Before too long your fingers itched. Maybe after your mother died you started calling yourself something different, something that started with A might be good. Maybe Alvin -- Al. People were running west in need of dreams and fortune, and you never had much use for dreams, but the fortune part sounded promising.

California wasn't good to everybody, but it was the best decision you ever made. You cut your Milwaukee losses and worked yourself in with the right people. Los Angeles was full of rich folks with even more gullibility. Maybe within a year or two you ended up helping out with Joe's guys for a Pasadena heist, and it wasn't the first time you'd encountered Joe Cabot, but it was the time he decided you weren't a hopeless sonofabitch.

Around New Year's, you know, the end of '79, you met a lady with a quicker draw than you and a filthier mouth. You introduced yourself as Larry, but, please, call you Al, and she was hard lady to pin, but that was why you liked her. You proposed after six months even though you knew the last thing a crook ever needed was someone for his enemies to go after and hold over his head. She reminded you of that, too, and said, anyway, she wouldn't marry a guy who couldn't even get her a ring, do it proper.

And it took a couple years, but in '82 maybe you robbed a jewelry store and kept a rock for yourself. She wore it, and you said you needed her to make an honest man out of you, drunk and heady with the adrenaline of a job well done.

"Funny. Such a fucking kidder," she said, but she was smirking like she did. Maybe you put your real name on the marriage license and everything.

Maybe a few months later you found out she was fucking one of your good buddies. Without going into the dirty details of it, maybe you ended up at a bar you had no business hanging around, packing a .45 with a half-full clip and wearing a stolen rock like a souvenir, or maybe more like remains. You did two years, and when you got out, you were just Larry Dimick again.

Or, okay, maybe what it was -- what it really was had to be a combination of the two. Once upon a time, you were Lawrence Jacobs, and then later you were Al Jacobs. You could remember your first big shot in this business, and you knew what it was like to get screwed over by people you trusted. So maybe that was why when Joe added you to the diamond gig and told you their was one new guy, you bought Mr. Orange another drink after Joe and Eddie took off.

And, Jesus, the guy had only done small lifts and moved pot. You could remember being that green but not showing it because you never really let yourself feel it. Even that day in the lumber yard, you were so fucking nervous that it had slipped into a false confidence, and you didn't think about how you were actually getting arrested until well after you were in holding. That day was supposed to be your big moment, and Orange talked about this job like it was his. He recounted the day-to-day anecdotes that being a dope dealer always gave guys, rolling his wedding ring around his finger. You wondered if he was nervous, too, but you never asked.

Maybe there was something in all of it that just kept reminding you of yourself. He was eager and a little cocky about what he knew he could do, and that was why you liked having him around. Maybe after the business for the day wrapped up, you kept getting drinks together, Orange talking about how this opportunity was perfect for him. He'd paid his dues in dogshit business until now, and it was good to be around someone that new to how the big jobs worked.

So, maybe you knocked back a few every other night, and eventually, in your living room with one too many between you, maybe he told you he fucking loved California because his wife hated it. Maybe you asked about her, and he confessed that he wasn't really married anymore, but he still wore the ring, you know. He didn't know why. It was all bullshit -- the world was full of bullshit people fucking over one another, he might have said, slurred, but you understood his meaning.

Maybe you told yourself that kissing him was all booze effect and bad judgment. You didn't even remember who moved in first, your hand pressed flat near the open collar of his shirt, and whether or not he started it, he hunched closer, mouth whiskey sharp.

Maybe he apologized -- sorry, sorry, that was -- I'm just -- but you had done the same things before. Once, Beryl's older brother got a hold of some absinthe, and that wasn't an _excuse_ , but you used it. Callused hands and rough lips on a dingy couch in an old, smelly garage, and it happened more than that time, but you didn't talk about it. This was the same, mostly, except this kid reminded you of yourself, and maybe that made it entirely different.

Orange (fucking Christ, you didn't even know this guy's _name_ ) kept trying to explain himself in harsh breaths. He tried to apologize in between the slide of lips until you told him to cool it, goddamn it, shut up. He dropped back a little, your belt slipping through the buckle under his fingers, and that was better. A hand on your dick was a lot better.

Maybe at some point, he said, "I can't fucking be _lieve_ ," possibly meaning one thing while you thought another. Maybe you assumed he was losing it over the job thing. This was supposed to be the heist that could make him, and that was getting to him a little, you thought, but then you had him on his back another time two nights later, so maybe not.

And, maybe. Maybe the problem was you just liked the guy. You always figured you had a great sense about people. You had a sixth sense about who would do the job well, and who was a fucking lunatic or something. Mr. Yellow, for instance, was one psychotic motherfucker, but professional respect was different from genuinely thinking a guy was okay.

What if watching Orange get shot, dying the backseat -- what if that just reminded you of a lumber yard payroll office gone wrong? Nobody had helped you out of your bind back then, and maybe you were due for encouraging some good fucking karma for a change. Help someone out. Maybe watching a guy bleeding from the gut was just too bad not to intervene.

The point was you were too old to be young and naive anymore, but you still fucked up and knew what it meant to stabbed in the back by people you trusted. Maybe the why didn't even matter, because the outcome didn't change. Maybe there were a shitload of good reasons why you lost your head for a cop and couldn't accept the inevitable until it bled all over your good shirt, confessing in a room full of corpses and careful whispers.

Then again, maybe you were only ever average at being honest -- at being human. So you pulled the trigger, and maybe there was no reason at all.

 


End file.
